Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) are revolutionizing the field of biomedicine for their capacity to generate localized heating so as to accomplish cellular stimulation or to attain tumour selective hyperthermia, among others.

Moreover, their dual function, as magnetic hyperthermia agents and as contrast enhancement agents, has made them grow into a paradigm in the theranostics field. The magnetic properties and the heating capacity of the MNPs are strongly dependent on the size, shape, crystallinity, homogeneity and collective behaviours. Our goal is to design novel multifunctional platforms with large magnetothermal actuation and minimal agglomeration among NPs to contribute to the improvement of magnetic hyperthermia therapies. Thus, our research line is focus on three main tasks:

Optimization of the chemical routes to obtain high quality ferrite-based nanoparticles of different sizes, composition and shapes.

Surface modification of MNPs to achieve bio-functionalized polymeric coatings.

Fabrication of multilayered microdisks loaded with MNPs, biomolecules and fluorophores.

Optimal formulations have been successfully used for hyperthermia treatment in-vitro using colon cancer-derived cell line, and have caused complete cell death at 48 h post-hyperthermia. In addition, these platforms have shown high resistance to endocytosis and unprecedented reproducibility of the heating power within cell environment. These results open up promising opportunities in the development of next-generation medical technologies.

We are currently working on the design of several multifunctional systems combining active modules of different nature (magnetic NPs, plasmonic NPs, probes, proteins, thermosensitive fluorophores, etc.) on a common platform.